Just days after Ukraine’s government announced via Twitter that it is now accepting cryptocurrency donations, a member of the Russian activist group and feminist punk band Pussy Riot, Nadya Tolokonnikova, take action to raise funds for war-torn country.
UkraineDAO mints a digital version of Ukraine’s blue and yellow flag. “Our goal is to use what we’re good at, web3, to assist Ukrainians as they cope with the Russian invasion of their country” punk activists say of UkraineDAO.
Although the NFT was produced as a single edition on the Ethereum blockchain, bidders were able to take shared ownership of the item, with contributions ranging from 0.00001 ether (under $0.03) to 44 ether ($128,000), according to a listing on NFT sale platform PartyBid.
The sale attracted over 3,200 individual contributions in 72 hours, amounting to just over 2,258 ether (equivalent to about $6.7 million at the time the auction concluded on Wednesday). Organizers said all the funds will go towards “Come Back Alive,” a campaign supporting Ukraine’s military.
“One of the most effective and transparent Ukrainian charitable and volunteer initiatives”
Tolokonnikova added, “We purposefully avoided adding our own art to this release, in a way it’s our strong conceptual artistic statement. People can have different aesthetics, but it’s not about what color we prefer, it’s about uniting to save lives. The Ukrainian flag unites us.”
According to UkraineDAO’s website, its members had considered creating unique artworks but decided that its choice of NFT “should be a symbol of the Ukrainian people rather than focused on a particular artist or aesthetic.”
On its website, UkraineDAO said that a “revolution” could not be achieved with conventional currencies, as there are “too many ways for traditional funds to be intercepted or halted by traditional institutions, governments, and other factions with intent to control, harm, or simply shift funds without transparency.”
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